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The Hound of Heaven
Francis Thompson
         I have included this on my web site, Were Our Hearts Not Burning?, hoping that some poor soul who is searching may find this, and then discover the insight that Francis offers.

 

                        Francis Thompson

 

I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;

      I fled Him, down the arches of the years;

I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways

      Of my own mind; and in the midst of tears

I hid from Him, and under running laughter.

            Up vistaed hopes I sped;

            And shot, precipitated,

Adown Titanic glooms of chasmed fears,

      From those strong Feet that followed, followed after.

            But with unhurrying chase,

            And unperturbed pace,

      Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,

            They beat—and a Voice beat

            More instant than the Feet—

      “All things betray thee, who betrayest Me.”

 

I knew all the swift importings

      On the willful face of skies;

      I knew how the clouds arise

      Spuméd of the wild sea-snortings;

            All that’s born or dies

      Rose and drooped with; made them shapers

Of mine own moods, or wailful or divine;

      With them joyed and was bereaven.

      I was heavy with the even,

      When she lit her glimmering tapers

      Round the day’s dead sanctities.

      I laughed in the morning’s eyes.

 

I triumphed and I saddened with all weather,

      Heaven and I wept together,

And its sweet tears were salt with mortal mine;

Against the red throb of its sunset heart

            I laid my own to beat,

            And share commingling heat;

But not by that, by that, was eased my human smart.

In vain my tears were wet on Heaven’s grey cheek.

For ah! we know not what each other says,

      These things and I; in sound I speak—

Their sound is but their stir, they speak by silences.

Nature, poor stepdame, cannot slake my drouth;

      Let her, if she would owe me,

Drop yon blue bosom-veil of sky, and show me

      The breasts of her tenderness:

Never did any milk of hers once bless

            My thirsting mouth.

            Nigh and nigh draws the chase,

            With unperturbed pace,

      Deliberate speed, majestic instancy;

            And past those noised Feet

            A Voice comes yet more fleet—

      “Lo! naught contents thee, who content’st not Me.”

 

Naked I wait Thy love’s uplifted stroke!

My harness piece by piece Thou hast hewn from me,

            And smitten to my knee;

      I am defenceless utterly.

      I slept, methinks, and woke,

And, slowly gazing, find me stripped in sleep.

In the rash lustihead of my young powers,

      I shook the pillaring hours

And pulled my life upon me; grimed with smears,

I stand amid the dust o’ the mounded years—

My mangled youth lies dead beneath the heap.

My days have crackled and gone up in smoke,

Have puffed and burst as sun-starts on a stream.

      Yea, faileth now even dream

The dreamer, and the lute the lutanist;

Even the linked fantasies, in whose blossomy twist

I swung the earth a trinket at my wrist,

Are yielding; cords of all too weak account

For earth with heavy griefs so overplussed.

      Ah! is Thy love indeed

A weed, albeit an amaranthine weed,

Suffering no flowers except its own to mount?

      Ah! must—

      Designer infinite!—

Ah! must Thou char the wood ere Thou canst limn with it?

 

My freshness spent its wavering shower i’ the dust;

And now my heart is as a broken fount,

Wherein tear-drippings stagnate, spilt down ever

      From the dank thoughts that shiver

Upon the sighful branches of my mind.

      Such is; what is to be?

The pulp so bitter, how shall taste the rind?

I dimly guess what Time in mists confounds;

Yet ever and anon a trumpet sounds

From the hid battlements of Eternity;

Those shaken mists a space unsettle, then

Round the half glimpsed turrets slowly wash again.

      But not ere him who summoneth

      I first have seen, enwound

With glooming robes purpureal, cypress-crowned;

His name I know, and what his trumpet saith.

Whether man’s heart or life it be which yields

      The harvest, must Thy harvest-fields

      Be dunged with rotten death?

 

            Now of that long pursuit

            Comes on at hand the bruit;

      That Voice is round me like a bursting sea:

            “And is thy earth so marred

            Shattered in shard on shard?

      Lo, all things fly thee, for thou fliest Me!”

      “Strange, piteous, futile thing!

Wherefore should any set thee love apart?

Seeing none but I makes much of naught” (He said),

“And human love needs human meriting:

      How hast thou merited—

Of all man’s clotted clay the dingiest clot?

      Alack, thou knowest not

How little worthy of any love thou art!

Whom wilt thou find to love ignoble thee,

      Save Me, save only Me?

All which I took from thee I did but take,

      Not for thy harms,

But just that thou might’st seek it in My arms.

      All of which thy child’s mistake

Fancies as lost, I have stored for thee at home:

      Rise, clasp my hand, and come!”

            Halts by me that footfall:

            Is my gloom, after all,

      Shade of His hand, outstretched caressingly!

            “Ah, fondest, blindest, weakest,

            I am He Whom thou seekest!

            Thou dravest love from thee, who dravest Me.”